


Fever Dream

by Apostrophic



Category: Justified
Genre: Episode: s04e07 Money Trap, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-04-30 16:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5171861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apostrophic/pseuds/Apostrophic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Take it to edge, Jody Adair had said. See what happens.</em>
</p><p>Well, how did this happen? “Money Trap” left a lot of loose threads, let’s just say that. What if Raylan leaves Jackie Nevada’s, what if Raylan goes to shake down Boyd instead of Arlo, what if Ava’s loaded for bear... what if, what if, what if.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up right where 4.07 leaves off. References just about everything in the episode, even minor details. It might be a stretch to think Raylan drives all the way to Harlan that night, but hey, if the show can do it, so can I.

Raylan cut the lights as he pulled in the drive. The whole place dark, no one home. He figured, he could turn around and try the bar— his 50/50 shot had been wrong— or he could wait. The idea of surprise, of showing up where he wasn’t expected, still appealed to him. He wanted the upper hand in this.

Ava’s Bronco was parked over in the side of the yard and he eased the Town Car around it. Pulled up nose to nose with it and then a little further before he cut the switch. He’d be hidden, not enough to be too deliberate about it but the kind he might get away with casually, if they didn’t look over and happen to notice. 

It beat Arlo’s. It beat going to see Arlo in prison and hearing the same goddamn bullshit. He’d told Art. He’d go tomorrow.

Why he was here was a different story. 

Raylan crunched the gravel, crossing the drive, and climbed the porch. Not even the porch light on for company. He peered through the screen, through the high window on the door, and convinced himself the house was empty. One finger on the screen door handle. It opened easily. 

If he rationalized it, would Boyd hesitate a second breaking into Raylan’s place? Needing to shake him down for info, he’d break in and be waiting there to flip the light and take Raylan by surprise. Probably wire the room for explosives and flip that switch too. Raylan did the math of ends and means. He reached down beside the planter’s box on the porch. Nudged the rock over and felt underneath.

He said, “Thank you, Ava,” holding up the key.

 

* * *

 

Ava gave Boyd an hour. 

She’d convinced him, drop her off at the bar while he had to turn around and drive back up to Clover Hill. Not telling him why, that going home to that empty house without him would put her mind in the place she didn’t want it to be right now. Alone. Alone anywhere the past two days and she’d drive herself insane, trying not to think. 

And she didn’t want company either, not unless Boyd counted for company. If she was honest, she wanted to take him someplace and screw him, shut her mind off, the vibe at the party getting to her after all. But it would have to wait another hour at least. Boyd kissing her, his mind already elsewhere— “Baby,” he said— and driving away. 

The place was just about dead for a Saturday night. A couple of local boys shooting pool. A girl or two with dates, dressed up a little trashy and getting buzzed, still more innocent-looking than any of the girls at Audrey’s. Ava, when she walked in dressed like she was, expected some look or some comment from Johnny, but he wasn’t there. Just Colt at the bar. Four empty bottles lined up in front of him, the bartender Kenny cracking open the fifth. 

“Your end goal six, twelve, or twenty-four?” Ava said, pulling the Elmer T. from the shelf and pouring a single. 

Colt looking up at her with a kind of glassy expression, a lag time to his mental processes. More than could be accounted for by the beer. “You all right?” Ava said with some concern, feeling a _déjà vu_ to it. She seemed to be asking that question a lot, and asking it mostly of Colt.

“Says he’s coming down with somethin,” said Kenny. 

A pause. Colt nodded, pointing. “What he said.” 

Ava took a sip, relished that first warm lick of alcohol. She added more to the glass, pouring it over half full. She said, “Where’s Johnny?” 

“Out.”

She stared at Colt. He stared back, then shrugged and repeated himself. “ _Out._ ”

Ava took her drink to the back room. Shut the door and appreciated the noise coming through it, enough music and conversation to pass as company. She sat at the desk and picked up some receipts but laid them back down again. 

She popped the clutch open and felt inside. 

Held up the ring that sparkled in the dim light. It didn’t feel like something that belonged to her yet. It felt like something on loan, not hers until she’d grown into it. Still, she had wanted to wear it that night, show it off, but one of them had the idea, her or Boyd— one of those things that seemed to come from them both— that they could draw more flies with honey instead of advertising that he’d made an honest woman of her. She touched it to her chin and slid it back on her finger. Working the ring with her thumb, watching it in the dim light.

To keep her mind away from anything else, she wondered how Boyd was making out, what he was up to. Back in his element now, scheming and dreaming instead of worrying about goddamn place servings. The kind of incongruities in him that made him surprising. 

By the time Ava’s phone buzzed, she was already half out the door. Boyd sounding sobered, his voice with that dangerous edge to it, miles away, but she could fix that. She could get him back quick.

She had to.

 

* * *

 

Raylan could remember, Ava sitting upstairs drunk on Jim Beam and cutting up Bowman’s clothes with scissors. Talking about wanting to burn this house to the ground. In the dark, everything was about the same. A few small things different. One chair in a different place. He shouldn’t be here. He should be screwing Jackie Nevada in a shower somewhere but something about it— even as half of him was all for the idea— the other half held him back. It wasn’t that she was young. It was some feeling that she hadn’t seen enough of the world yet and some of the anger deep down inside him might be like a virus, infect her and mess her up for the world of high stakes forever. 

He needed to get to the bottom of this Drew Thompson shit, is what he needed. Boyd was the one with the head start, now that he himself had spent days on Josiah Cairn and Jody Adair. With the element of surprise in Raylan’s favor, maybe he could get Boyd running his mouth, slipping up with something Raylan could use even if Boyd was too slick for that and would give him some kind of bullshit dead end. In fact, he bet himself a three-dollar martini he could get Boyd running his mouth. All the while telling himself, he was a coward, going to these kind of lengths to avoid facing Arlo. Told himself though, that’s what he wanted. Get something from Boyd, take it to Arlo, show Arlo how the bastard son he never had was working against him too. 

It occurred to Raylan right then and there: knowing Arlo, Boyd would just make Arlo proud.

 

* * *

 

Boyd slipped with the key in the lock three times before getting it open, Ava in the way, Ava like a live-wire, Ava in his arms. Not letting go of his hair, of his mouth. He had come down from Clover Hill laid low, barely able to think, ready to torch some motherfuckers, ready to raze about fifty square miles of the county to the ground, and Ava had come out of the bar keyed up, impatient, loaded for bear. A volatile combination, like black powder and a spark. It could wait— she made it clear without a word— whatever had taken place on the hill. It took less than the ride home to change Boyd’s mind on the matter. It could wait. 

He could get into a different sort of trouble tonight. 

Marrying Ava Crowder had just about all the appeal in the world right now. His ring on her finger, that dress he wanted to get her out of as soon as possible. They slammed the doors on the truck and Ava had stopped him from going further, standing there blocking the path to the house. 

She had reached out and dug her fingers into his hair. Touched her thumb to the wrinkles at the corner of his eye as he pulled her into a kiss. 

Making it up onto the porch, their mouths still connected, intent with it and fumbling, hands all over each other. Ava working the buttons open on his vest while he slipped with the key in the lock three times before he realized it was open.

They shut the door behind them with the force of their combined weight. Ava pinned him tight to the door, unhooking his belt without looking down. “Baby?” she said, breathless, a gleam in her eye. “That offer from earlier still stand? Give or take?” The both of them smiling at that one, Ava giving the belt a good hard tug to get it free. Biting at her lip while Boyd tugged at her dress. Give _and_ take.

The lamp switched on in the living room. Both of their heads turning at the same time, right as Raylan said, “Hey. Hello.”

 

* * *

 

Christ. The two of them locked at the mouth, breaking the kiss only to turn their heads. Ava pressed up against him, Boyd’s hands bunching her dress almost up to her ass. Raylan had heard the fumbling, heard the door and heard everything, having to race his mind now on how to get out of this jackpot. There wasn’t any way it wasn’t gonna be awkward as hell. The longer he waited the worse, so. He’d flicked on the light. Too late already. 

Only he just now saw it, the two of them running on some kind of high that precluded any normal reaction. Not alcohol or narcotics. Some kind of high from abnormal events that just made abnormal events seem a matter of course.

Christ again, the two of them not even jumping apart. Just standing there frozen like sex-crazed teenagers, like they were making up their minds whether this obstacle was any obstacle at all. 

“Raylan?” Boyd was the one to speak first, finally— of course Boyd was. “You ever hear of not coming in a man’s home uninvited?”

Raylan, being so dead in the wrong on this one he didn’t have an answer for it. Inappropriate as anything else, his question was the only one he could think of. “Where you two been?”

Boyd gave that some thought. The first time Raylan had seen Boyd have to give any answer some thought. It occurred to him, fleeting: maybe this could still work in his favor. 

“Swinging,” was Boyd’s one word answer. Another first: a one-word answer. And, Raylan noticed, one that did not surprise Ava, not in the least, like the two of them sharing some joke, some secret. “Or, _try_ ing too,” Boyd said. Surprising Raylan like hell, then, saying: “You here to cockblock me from screwing my fiancée?”

There was his three-dollar martini bet. Raylan waited.

“Or,” Boyd said. (Raylan thinking: here comes thirty dollars worth of martinis.) “You here to  _help_ me screw my fiancée?”

Joking. Being flippant with it, a joke. Trying to throw Raylan off his game, a curve ball down low on the inside of the plate. But there was something else to it too. Some other part of this secret Boyd shared with Ava, something sober and serious. A challenge, like there was no way left to surprise them, like there was some threshold the two of them had crossed, unbeknownst to Raylan, but now he had crossed too because of this idea he’d had to get the drop on Boyd.

The night was already so strange. So wild and reckless. Some kind of unaccountability to it. A free pass. An unspoken pact. An escalating dare. Nothing in it would count for anything.

If he’d stayed with Jackie Nevada...

If he’d gone to see Arlo that day instead...

 _Take it to edge,_ Jody Adair had said. _See what happens_.

Crime tape all around the bar because he’d shot Jody dead on the floor.

The bar where he lived; the kind of man he was now. Living in a bar. Where he’d shot a man that night. 

Boyd and Ava having a conversation with their eyes, a whole dialogue back and forth known only to them. Fiancée? Like they were goddamn married already. That kind of spooky psychic connection, borne of the simple act of sharing a bed at night and sharing breakfast in the morning and having conversations that were not just about the weather.

“She gives permission, or you do?”

Raylan was sure he was just joking too.

“ _I_ do,” Ava said. Raylan standing nearby in the room. 

“And it’s Boyd I want to screw. Not you.”

Boyd said, looking Ava in the eye and getting her nod, “Our house. Our rules.”

It was like an out-of-body experience. Like he was three bottles deep on fifths of Jim Beam. Like he had missed a curve on the highway, like the car hung, suspended, out over the edge.

Raylan unclipped his holster. His badge. Laid them on the table. “That’s so we can cut the cheesy line, all right? No, _‘That a gun on your belt or you just happy to see me?’”_

 

* * *

 

Ava, earlier that night, seeing those red lights and dark rooms and naked skin, felt the edge of it, some boundary she had never crossed that all of a sudden seemed permitted. It surprised her, appealed to her, the reckless mood she was in. She wouldn’t have done it there. Never in a million. She _had_ thought, pull Boyd in some broom closet and screw him, that would be fitting enough for the evening, just her and Boyd, daring enough. And then those plans got derailed.

No red light here. Just a lamp over the chair in the corner. Her own home. Nothing tawdry about it. Just something she wanted to do. 

Never in a million, until right there in the moment.

 

* * *

 

Taking this one step at a time, feeling her way, Ava leaned back into Boyd. Unhooked his jeans, took hold of him in her hand. She could just about take his knees out with that in the beginning, but now, running Audrey’s, she came home with new ideas from the girls by the dozen. _There’s something I wanna see_ , she’d say. Or _can I try something a minute?_ She’d be so serious about it, yet so off-hand, and so seductive with it just by being so curious, not playing a role. Had he known all those years, lusting after her. Had he had _any_ idea, she wouldn’t be marrying him now because he would’ve jumped her on sight and she would have shot him. He sucked in a deep breath.

“Baby,” Ava said softly, in her own warm-static voice. Still pressing him against the door. Raylan stood behind her. He took off his coat, chucking it over a chair, and stood behind Ava. Getting the feel for this, working out what to do. Like he expected, any minute, one or all of them to call the bluff, call this off. He lifted Ava’s hair from her shoulder. Touched his face to her neck. Not a kiss yet, just a touch, seeing what was allowed. The warm scent of her that was familiar to him, filed in his memory. 

Ava said, “Mm.”

Raylan did it again. And again. Now they were kisses. 

Boyd was pulling her to him, Raylan not yet. Raylan’s hands on the curve of her waist. Ava went for Boyd’s mouth, diving in hard. Biting and kissing and then slowing it down, if this was going to last.

Boyd, who already had her dress up around the top of her thighs, pushed it up an inch or two more. His palms flat on her skin, so slow about it that her skin prickled with gooseflesh. He caught Raylan’s eye. Nodding for what he wanted Raylan to do. Raylan reached down, under the dress, and with his thumbs hooked the edge of her underwear. Thin and lace, nothing much to it, and as he worked them down her legs he saw they were black. Different. A pair he had never seen.

Ava holding Boyd’s eyes through this, the faint surprise at where they were taking this, but smitten, intrigued, a little drunk with this power she had. With her eyes, telling Boyd: wherever he wanted to take it next.

 

* * *

 

At first: Ava in her high heels. When Ava got barefoot, that’s when it changed, into something altogether else. More intimate. Just being herself. Boyd had said three times that night in three different contexts, _screwing my fiancée,_ and that’s exactly the plan he carried out. The both of them, there for Ava. Raylan catching onto this too, following that lead in everything. 

So when Ava, addled with lust and all the words screwed out of her brain, made the sound she made when she could no longer stand it and squirmed her bare skin against Boyd, they were the ones to accommodate, no other way it was ordained to end up.

 

* * *

 

Ava wanting on top. That was the Ava Raylan remembered, not the one who surprised him that night, at ease and vulnerable, lying back in the bed. Then lying back against Boyd, his hand on her forehead, smoothing back her blonde hair like she had a fever. The kind of control she’d never surrendered to Raylan a year ago. But now she wanted on top, and she wanted control.

Raylan, never in a million but right in the moment, let go of her. Ava on the edge, aching, ready. A sound from her, almost pleading, so full of want when Boyd took over. Knowing just how to do it, the secret language of her body that was secret even from Raylan. She whispered something to Boyd, coming back around for a minute, the bright hot light in her eyes. And Boyd, the focus he gave her, yet the smile on his face, as he got her into position, both of them sunk in the pillows piled against the headboard. Ava clutching his shoulder for balance. The sound she made when, as in control as he was about anything, he let her have what she wanted. 

Their own language taking over, garbled words and half-words that were full of meaning only to them. “Good?” “ _Ba_ by.” “Good.” “Now?” “No.” “Now.”

Raylan seeing the ring on her hand that still threw him for a loop. A marriage that seemed months old already, maybe even years, that he had set in motion back when he screwed Winona. A bond that, all of a sudden, he wanted to wreck, just to see if he could, because once upon a time he would have had that power, but he knew now, instinctively, that power was out of his hands. For the second time that night, in a position where he shouldn’t be. 

A word from Boyd got his attention again. Their own silent nod and order for what he should do. Boyd, stroking Ava, and his other hand on her hip, keeping her tight against him. So it was Raylan who lifted her hair from her neck. He kissed the curve of her neck, his hand tracing, exploring, his warm hands, her warm skin. Ava filling her lungs, pressing against him. 

 

* * *

 

She sank her teeth into Boyd’s shoulder. Buried her face, stifled the sound. It was like something shattered inside her. It was like a long fuse, detonating. It was like nothing else. One crash right on top of the other, the hummingbird hammer of her heart when she collapsed, spent, against him. Molten to the core, no strength left in her. Her skin soaked and damp against his. 

Boyd, the way he always did, dug his hand in her hair. Holding her there, against the own hammer and pound of his heart, letting their bodies communicate for them. Recovering, slowly getting back their breath. The smile he could feel on Ava’s face where it was buried in the center of his chest. The way she didn’t move at first, not for a long while, not bearing to break them apart.

It came back to him from earlier, told by men in eight-hundred-dollar suits what it was that Crowders do. The white hot futile heat of anger blazing through him, the helplessness and desolation. But now, here was the thing between him and Ava that none of those rich, rotten bastards could touch. He’d have to tell Ava. He’d have to decide what to do with Frank Browning. How to upend that world. Not right now. He held Ava to him, breathing in the scent of her hair.

He remembered Raylan. Owing Raylan something else in the transaction, something vague and undecided. But the bed beyond Ava: Raylan wasn’t there.

Boyd lifted up a bit from the pillows. Ava lifted her head from his chest. He could see over the edge of the bed, the only clothes on the floor: his jeans, Ava’s dress. “What?” Ava said softly.

The sound of an engine turned over outside. 


End file.
